4k Gaming – Reviews of the Best PC’s, GPU’s, Games, Benchmarks, Monitors Available for Sale 2016

Top 5 GPU’s for Gaming at 4k Resolution

This is it, the Nvidia GTX 1080 is the single best GPU we’ve yet seen by a long shot, the 4K gaming graphics card we’ve been waiting for since 4K gaming was a thing and now its on sale for one stunningly affordable price. Across all performance metrics for HD, 1440p and most importantly, 4K gaming, nothing from either AMD or Nvidia beats this superb Pascal-powered GPU and its GDDR5X memory. We can’t recommend the GTX 1080 enough!

Meet Nvidia’s spectacularly advanced, VR and HDR-capable GTX 1070 GPU, one of the latest models in the gaming company’s next-generation line of high performance graphic cards. The GTX 1070 in particular is the competitive 1440p and high frame rate HD gamer’s graphics card par excellence and its heavy duty specs back this claim up nicely with a 1506MHz core clock, 8GB VRAM and Nvidia’s new Pascal chipset architecture, which is designed to offer exceptionally fine handling of both Virtual reality gaming and high dynamic range gaming as both emerge much more in late 2016 and 2017.

Nvidia’s GTX 1060 is the GPU makers answer to today’s frame rate hungry HD and 1440p gamers. Thus this GPU includes the new high-efficiency Pascal chipset architecture of all 2016 Nvidia cards and also offers up the same advanced HDR support and Virtual Reality gaming capacities along with too many other powerful features to list here in detail. Featuring a 1506MHz core clock, 192GB/s memory bandwidth and a 6GB GDDR5 VRAM, the GTX 1060 is one very serious card that comes at a very decent price if you’re interested in excellent performance for your competitive 1080p and 1440p gaming needs.

One of the best mid-range GPU available on the market. Polaris architecture with 14nm processors in order to deliver high performance gaming. HDMI 2.0b, Displayport 1.4 & 1.3, HDR and Freesync. Overall an excellent GPU for the price range.

Top 5 4k Gaming Monitors

The Acer Predator XB321HK is probably one of the best 4K gaming monitors we’ve had the pleasure of reviewing to-date. With superb connectivity for all sorts of PC gaming and workstation needs, the inclusion of Nvidia G-Sync technology for smooth gameplay and some truly excellent color and contrast specs, the XB321HK delivers just about everything a serious 4K PC gamer could want. Its massive 32 inch display also offers plenty of immersion.

The Asus MG28UQ may not be the flashiest 4K gaming monitor on the market but it delivers all the essentials superbly and at an excellent price. HDMI 2.0, HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort and multiple USB 3.0 ports all share space in a sleek matte black monitor which is fully adjustable for height, pivot, tilt and rotation. Even better, AMD GPU synchronization in the form of AdaptiveSync technology for an even smoother 4K or 1440p PC gameplay experience at a great budget price.

AMD FreeSync, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2 and some truly stunning visual performance all combine together in the stylish design of the Samsung UE590 4K IPS monitors. These are sincerely excellent models of 4K gaming and home office display technology. Coming in both a compact 24 inch model and a spacious 28 inch version, the UE590 is decently priced and one of our favorite 4K gaming monitors to-date.

Dell’s S2817Q comes loaded with superb connectivity specs and offers some of the best performing built-in speakers we’ve seen on any 4K monitor in recent memory. With multiple USB 3.0 ports, DisplayPort 1.2 and mini DP 1.2 as well as dual HDMI 2.0 ports with MHL, the S2817Q comes with everything you need for a complete gaming hookup. This model’s color and contrast performance are great and the IPS panel delivers excellent viewing angles. Also, did we mention that the S2817Q is wonderfully priced?

What is 4K Gaming?
4K ultra HD gaming isn’t so much about the games themselves as it is about the hardware. Right off the bat, you should understand that.

Yes, there are games being put on the market that are specifically designed for native 4K ultra HD resolution as their ideal and while there are also older games that simply won’t work well on a 4K PC. However, the real meat of gaming in this awesome ultra HD resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels really lies in the hardware you use to play all sorts of PC games designed with HD or outright 4K in mind.

This is because if you already have a 4K UHD PC in hand, you can take almost any newer game, even if it hasn’t been developed to scale completely to 4K UHD graphics and simply upscale it so that it renders (usually) smoothly on a fully 4K screen. Of course, there are also games being sold that play best at 4K resolutions, are designed for 4K resolutions and can only be played on Full HD PCs if they’re actually scaled down to their lowest levels of detail.

Thus, in simple terms, 4K PC gaming is all about having a killer UHD Monitor (or 4K TV that hooks up smoothly to your PC) and a gaming rig PC with the GPU, processing, connectivity and RAM hardware to handle playing the best ultra-detailed games at full-blown ultra HD resolution.

However, this isn’t exactly easy to pull off and only very, recently have graphic cards begun to emerge which are genuinely capable of managing 4K gaming at serious frame rates and detail leves.

Best of all, the game hardware landscape has improved a lot since the more pessimistic days of mid-2014. If you read some of the content on the web that comes from mi last year, you’ll often hear about how you can only have 4K gaming at 30 frames per second or less, or how you need at least 3 or 4 GPUs running together to manage any sort of ultra HD gameplay at anything resembling a smooth flow of motion and decent detail levels. And then there was also all the talk of pricing and how ridiculously expensive UHD PCs are.

Well, these things have changed quite a bit in the last year, and while 4K gameplay is still not nearly as affordable as normal HD PC gaming, it’s getting a lot cheaper than it was even 7 months ago. Best of all, the key manufacturers of GPUs, Nvidia and AMD have finally started kicking out graphics cards that can really chew up 4K resolution on most games at at least decent frame rates in high and ultra detail levels and at excellent frame rates in mid-level detail settings.

This is a definite improvement over 2014 and GPUs like NVIDIA’s new 2016 Pascal graphics cards, the somewhat older GTX 980 Ti and Titan X from Nvidia or the new AMD Radeon 300x line and the Radeon 295X2 are not only solid at most types of 4K PC gaming, they’re also surprisingly affordable. All the more when you take into account that these new GPUs can work alone in a 4K PC. You no longer need to buy several graphics cards and hook them together.

So what tools will I need to game at ultra HD Resolution

For starters, all gamers who want to do their gameplay at full 4K resolution will need that most basic and fundamental piece of hardware: the 4K ultra HD display screen.

This can take the form of either a 4K PC monitor, of which there are many available models now, or a 4K TV, which will come with a lot more connectivity options and a far more robustly noticeable UHD resolution clarity thanks to its larger size.

Whichever of the two is the case, the display absolutely will also need either an HDMI 2.0 port or a DisplayPort 1.2 connection port built into it. This is crucial for running 4K graphics between the PC and the screen at a robust and smooth Hz instead of the 30 Hz offered by HDMI 1.4 ports.

Almost any smaller, cheaper 4K TV from Samsung, Sony, Vizio or LG will easily give you at least the HDMI 2.0 ports and some models even include DisplayPort 1.2 connections. However, 4K TVs, even small ones, will also cost at least $800 and that’s at a bare minimum.

On the other hand, 4K monitors are a lot more affordable and a number of models now well for well below $500, though not all of them include connectivity for HDMI 2.0, so this is something that you’ll have to check as you shop around. Additionally, if you can get your hands on a monitor with G-Synch technology built into it. You will not only experience smoother gameplay, the machine is also guaranteed to have compatibility with the best 4K video cards on the market, which come from from Nvidia

Next up is getting your hands on a robust GPU and a solid processor. These are two of the most crucial parts of a clean, smooth gaming experience in 4K and we cover them in a lot more detail below.

GPUs for Gaming your way to 60 frames per second

The real holy grail of gaming in either HD or ultra HD resolution on a PC is managing to pull it off at very close to or even beyond 60 frames per second. This is what has been so difficult with 4K PCs since the possibility of gaming at this resolution even emerged and only now are GPUs emerging that can handle all those pixels fast enough to deliver the smoothness of 60 frames per second.

The bottom line is that this simply isn’t easy to pull off and we have to give a lot of kudos to makers like AMD and Nvidia for having pulled off what they’ve managed. The temperature and power strains on a GPU that manages to refresh 8.2 million pixels 60 times per second are big and this is why even powerful graphics cards like AMD’s former flagship the R9 290 couldn’t pull off more than 30 fps on resolution heavy 4K games and even then would often heat up to a skin-frying 95 degrees celcius.

Only recently have GPUs like Nvidias amazingly powerful new GTX 1080 and Titan X (2016) Pascal graphics cards, or to a lesser extent their GTX 980 Ti, Titan X (2015) and somewhat older but still very powerful Titan Z emerged with the ability to actually handle many UHD games like Crysis 3, Assasins Creed Unity, Battlefield 4 and Ryse: Son of Rome at speeds of up to or sometimes even beyond 60 fps. Furthermore, all of these are single GPU units, which makes their achievement all the more impressive.

Then there are the newest AMD graphics cards. These can also perform admirably at 4K resolution and relatively high frame rates while managing to do it without running nearly as hot as used to be the case. The AMD Radeon 295X2 is one particularly powerful unit that regularly manages 60 fps even at high detail settings for many middle-weight 4K games and can come close to 60 frames even for really graphics intensive games like Battlefield 4.

Finally, and these are brand new, there are the AMD Radeon Fury and Fury X cards, which are essentially the new flagship GPUs from AMD. Their performance in 4K settings is genuinely impressive and has even been shown to beat the Titan X during benchmark testing in some regards.

These latter GPUs come with high-bandwidth memory (HBM) as an integral feature and due to its ability to run much better memory bandwidth than the aging GDDR5 infrastructure, they offer some of the fastest and most efficient single-GPU power available today.

Another crucial thing to keep in mind about any of the above GPUs is their cooling requirements and power supply needs. For example, the Radeon 295X2, with it’s dual GPU architecture, comes with an entire liquid cooling and air cooling combo that your PC tower will have to make room for. Furthermore, it sucks up a monstrous 500 watts of power and you need to be ready for this with the right kind of power box. The Titan X from Nvidia, on the other hand, eats up 600 watts of power and though it’s air cooled and much more efficient at keeping to a reasonable temperature, installing it means making sure that that heat gets funneled out of your PC tower and not into the rest of your internal hardware, where it can build up.

Finally, the really hardcore GPUs and power requirements described above are all about gaming at the full 60 frames and at high detail levels. If you’re happy with enjoying your 4K games at medium or low detail settings or can manage at a slightly choppy 30 frames per second, your 4K gaming experience becomes a lot easier. AT these settings, even a couple of Nvidia GTX 970 units or possibly a single 980 will be more than enough.

We’ve actually reviewed several of these graphics cards (or all of them, depending on when you read this) here at 4K.com and you can check out those review above on this same page.

What to look for in a 4K Monitor

4K monitors come in all shapes and sizes, and many of the latest models not only offer better than ever connectivity, they also cost less than they used to.

For the time being, no UHD monitor is equipped to handle ultra HD resolution at more than 60Hz, so pushing your gamin to beyond that level is pretty much pointless for now. However, sooner or later, DisplayPort 1.3 will emerge in newer 4K PC displays and then GPU technology will have to catch up all over again.

Right now however, 4K monitors for PC gaming have a couple of crucial requirements. For starters, make sure your 4K screen comes with at least a DisplayPort 1.2 port. This will give you your 60Hz refresh rate and all of the GPUs we covered above are built with DP 1.2 connectivity.

You can also go for a monitor with both DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0. Of these, there are only a few on sale as of this writing but they offer an entirely new connectivity option for high frame rate UHD gaming and they’re also useful for 4K movie/video streaming from a media box when it comes to market. However, bear in mind that the only GPUs which offer HDMI 2.0 connectivity so far are those from Nvidia, and only their latter models. AMD hasn’t yet caught up to this trend since Display Port dominates the PC market.

Finally, aim for a 4K monitor with either FreeSync or G-Sync technology built into it. These will match your screens refresh rate to that of your GPU and create a much smoother overall performance, regardless of the native GPU refresh rate. G-Sync belongs to Nvidia and is designed to mesh with its GPUs, while FreeSync is AMD’s technology and aimed at AMD GPUs. Of the two, G-Sync is generally the smoother performer.

Whatever 4K monitor you go for, just make absolutely sure that it is not a 30Hz panel. These are common and very affordable, but what they give you in terms of price is completely ruined by the fact that they simply suck with 4K gaming. No matter how good the rest of your 4K gaming rig is, if your monitor is capable of only 30Hz, it will cause graphics to flicker and you’ll never get to enjoy the smoothness of 4K at 60 frames per second. This is no fun if you’ve already spent $1000 on a GPU specifically because it’s supposed to deliver smooth high frame rate gameplay.

Some Recommendations for your 4K Gaming PC

A full blown 4K gaming rig that’s built to truly handle high levels of 4K graphics at high fps is simply not going to be cheap. The high end GPUs we mentioned above all cost at least $400 (the AMD R9 390X) and as much as $1000 (the Titan X from Nvidia). And these are just your GPUs.

Your PC monitor will run you to at least $400 for a decent TN 60Hz model, and you’ll also need a compatible power supply, motherboard, CPU and some seriously solid RAM, at least 12 and ideally 16 GB of it.

Putting this all together for yourself will cost at least $2300 if you want to play 4K games at maximum possible frame rates and maximum possible detail. If you’re willing to settle for lower levels of 4K gaming, then you could probably put together a 4K gaming PC for just over $1000.

A Word on Game Consoles

While 4K PC gaming can be done at 60 fps with upscaled 1080p HD games and even some of the still few 4K 2160p UHD games out there, even if somewhat expensively, console gaming is a slightly different story.

You can definitely play your favorite console games on a PlayStation or Xbox from a 4K TV and get great graphics and decent rendering at 30 fps with the TVs upscaling engine and the console’s HDMI 1.4 connection. However, if you want to aim for gameplay at 60 frames, you’re still somewhat out of luck.

Most game consoles still just offer Full HD gameplay at 60 frames and their manufacturers are only now beginning to put serious consideration into the upgrades that would make both of the major game consoles on the market fully 4K-ready on the 4K UHD TVs that are growing steadily more popular. Basically, we probably won’t see serious advancements on this front for at least a few more months, until near the middle of 2016 that is.

The Future of 4K Gaming

Where is 4K gaming going you wonder? Well, it’s definitely headed towards the mainstream of home entertainment. It’s already almost there with PC games and it will just be a bit longer before the same happens more formally with console games running with 4K TVs. Here is some available sample 4k videos and here is where you can find movies in 4k.

Just like HD gaming took off and became the gold standard of the gamers experience, the same will happen with its 4K counterpart, at least with offline gaming for the time being and later with online games as internet speeds more widely reach the kinds of 15 to 30Mbps speeds that they’d need to handle game streams at 3840 x 2160 pixels.

Some Awesome 4K Games

Finally, we move down to the meat of the matter with a mention of the kinds of 4K-ready games you can already play. Remember, any game that has been developed with 1080p HD playing in mind is already good to go for any 4K PC or laptop because it can be upscaled by your video card.

But as for native 4K games, the following are some excellent choices to test out if you’ve got your own 4K PC and are rearing to go:

I’m upgrading my monitors on my pc. And I would like to run ACER CB280HK 4K 28″ ULTRA HD 3 monitors at 6480×3840. But finding a Graphics card or cards to do so isntvas easy as I thought it would be. Any suggestions on some reasonable price card (s) ?

I saw a video of someone running three 40″ 4K monitors with three GTX 980’s. Now, with the new Pascal cards, you can easily do this. The GTX 1060 is on par with the GTX 980 of yesteryear. For $750 to $900 you can pick up three of them, and plug one monitor into each card.

If you want to really pump those high / ultra settings on AAA games of 2016, you’re going to need 1070’s or 1080’s, though.

The good news is that 4K is getting more and more accessible for the average enthusiast. A year or two ago, it would cost $2,500 to $4,000 to get into serious 4K gaming… and now you can get into it for $1,500 to $2,000 pretty easily. Good luck on your build!

BenQ BL3201PH – a 32 inch 4k monitor. Bigger size makes text scale nicer with the increased resolution.
Another option would be the Acer XB270HU which is a 1440p (less than 4k but better than 1080) that has a faster refresh rate which can make it better for first person shooter types of games.
Sorry if this doesn’t help, suppose my best advice would be to look in the store and see what you like best, then write down the model number, go home, and buy it on Amazon

Hello Lauren, the GPU your PC comes with is originally from a brand called NVIDIA and is compatible with G-Sync technology while also being HDMI 2.0 capable and includes DisplayPort. Thus, my best recommendation for you would be a 4K UHD monitor with G-Sync and both DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 connectivity. Right off the top of my head, one clear example whih we’ve reviewed comes to mind, this one, but it doesn’t come with HDMI 2.0, only DisplayPort 1.2:

It is a great gaming monitor and useful for all sorts of other purposes as well. If you want something a little more flashy looking, you can also go for the Asus Swift PG27AQ 4K Ultra HD Monitor if they have it at Best Buy. This is also a very 4K gaming friendly 4K UHD display which also comes with G-Sync technology and it looks great, so your grandkids should love its appearance. We have a review of this Asus monitor pending publication but it won’t be up for a couple more days.

Bottom line: Get a 4K UHD PC monitor with G-Sync, DisplayPort 1.2, USB 3.0 and if at all possible HDMI 2.0 connectivity (but this last spec isn’t essential). The most important specs, however are that your 4K monitor have DisplayPort 1.2 and that it be ideal for gaming (tell the sales rep that you want a 4K gaming monitor with G-Sync technology if available and that you want DisplayPort 1.2 included).

I would like to know does an Inspiron Desktop, 4th Generation Intel Core i7 processor good (Atleast) for getting 60fps and 4k quality for gaming and video editing with a two Nvida GPU’s i’m new at this so bear with me i’m learning what type of Pc i need for gaming.

Hello Harold, I looked at the link you passed me and don’t know which specific machine you’re considering. More importantly, do you know which model of NVIDIA GPU the desktop unit you have in mind will include? This is the key piece of information. The rest is secondary as long as you have a 4K monitor, 4K compatible motherboard and high-end gaming gpu-compatible power unit.

I’m looking to buy or build (watching videos to learn how to build a pc) if i buy one i would like to know if i can run 6fps with 4k on an Titan X SLI if i was to buy the Dell Inspiron 4th generation i7 Intel Core pc for 799.99 on that site i have left an link to? Would that be a suitable computer to get plus to add an Nvidia GTX Titan X SLI to it once i bought my pc?

Hi there Harold. In basic terms, I think you should be okay for reasonable frame rates at 4K textures/on a 4K monitor with a Titan X SLI and the PC with the i7 processor you mention. I can’t be sure about 60fps but for one thing, getting close to this will vary from game to game, with some games being much more intensive on your GPU than others. Thus, you could have a game that barely hits the 30fps mark and sometimes slides even lower while others zip right up to a respectable 55+fps. Secondly, while the GPU you mention should be okay along with the PC/processor combo, make sure you also have a compatible power unit at work for your rig since the Titan X can easily reach 650+ watts at full load, and you might want to consider a cooling unit for the CPU, though this might not be necessary if you don’t really push your gaming to extremes. Again, a lot is going to depend on how intensively you push your 4K gaming. Finally, I’m not sure what sort of 4K monitor you had in mind but the following are some great suggestions I put together recently. TN monitors are generally the cheaper option and offer great response times to boot, so I’d go for one of those, even if they don’t have as fine of color output and viewing angles as an IPS display (but who really uses a gaming monitor while looking at it from above or off to one side anyhow??)

Hey there Rob, while I’m not expert on emulation gaming and you should take my advice in this area with a very big grain of salt, I’d say that you should simply aim for real, full-blown 4K PC gaming if you’re interested in 4K graphics.
However, if you do just want to see your emultaion setup on the much larger screen of a 4K TV, you might not need any serious GPU upgrades since the TV will handle a lot of the work and upscaling while the games themselves are (I assume) much lower-res than a real 4K game with such graphics programmed into it. One possible card for your PC that’s relatively affordable and good enough for a robust boost to its video processing power would be the MSI R9 390X GAMING 8G Graphics Card (AMD Architecture) or, even cheaper but still very decently powerful for what I think would be your needs as you describe them, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 970 4GB 4k GPU.

What cpu do you recommend for 4k gaming? For the big money builds I see everyone use a 5960x but I keep also reading the 6700k i7 is faster etc etc. What do you guys recommend, which will be the fastest processor and by how much.

Hey there Jake, for 4K gaming in a PC, the i7 you mention isn’t bad at all if you want something a bit lighter (but still very powerful). It’s a solid performer from what I know of the technology. However, for serious CPU gaming power for 4K needs, an even better CPU would be the six-core i7-5820K processor. it gets cooling from Corsair’s 240mm liquid cooler the H100i v2 and offers great overclocking capacity as well. Six cores is definitely better than the four cores of the 6700k i7.

One aspect is the noise on gaming at 4K for more than 30 minutes with lot of eye candy on. Personal experience, I love the AMD 295X2 because it being water-cooled does not generate the amount of noise that is disturbing.

This is all the more true if the ambient temperatures are 35 degree Celcius and above

‘Upscaling’ really isn’t a good way of describing what’s going on when you play an old game in 4k. Rasterisation is fundamentally per-pixel and shaders are executed on a per-pixel basis. Only textures are ‘upscaled’ in any meaningful sense, and even with them the term is an oversimplification. World of Warcraft, for example, has 256×256 terrain textures, and yet moving from 1440p to 4k produces a clearly apparent increase in distant texture detail, just because the game has a very long view distance. Even small textures require very high screen resolutions to fully resolve when far enough away.

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